Robert's Blog

May 27, 2005

ONE campaign

the ONE campaign is the u.s. version of “make poverty history” (which is the u.k. version of the ONE campaign). basically this is a grassroots effort to push our government for fighting for economic justice concerning the poorest of the poor within our world. this translates to the u.s. government moving towards an additional one percent of it’s budget (roughly 25 billion) being directed towards helping honest governments overcome extreme poverty and health issues and using legal means to fight against the corpution in other governments that diverts resources away from these needs.

here’s what an additional one percent of the use budget would be able to do:

help prevent 10 million children from becoming AIDS orphans
help get 104 million children into grade school.
help provide water to almost 900 million people around the globe.
save almost 6.5 million children under 5 from dying of diseases that could be prevented with low-cost measures like vaccination or a well for clean water.

pretty impressive what an additional one percent will do huh?

the irony is that the u.s. and the other g8 countries have already agreed to the u.n. millenium goals that are behind the ONE campaign’s desire. the “millenium goals” were setup with the u.n. to cut extreme poverty in half by the year 2015. the problem is that we are all way behind on reaching these goals.

so here’s why i’m writing this.

here

secondly, help me in considering the possiblity of hosting a “ONE campaign” event at our church or in baton rouge. i have been in contact with the southern united states coordinator of the ONE campaign concerning such an event and she has expressed interested in doing something here. if we do one i will need everyone’s help that i can get.

May 27, 2005

look what i found in the church vending machines today

i was standing in front of the vending machines in the church family life center foyer and i found hooters potato chips in the church vending machines. what’s up with that? i think it’s pretty funny.

i actually have strange feelings on hooters:

first, i don’t see what the big deal is. i mean really, you can see much more revealing attire on the street.
second, if i had a daughter i would never want her to work at hooters because the restaurant is advertising her like a piece of meat. the thought of a human being being treated as nothing more than an object to be gawked at is abhorrent to me.

so basically , while i think the restaurant is no big deal i still think the idea of treating women as objects is awful.

May 26, 2005

facts?

this dilbert strip basically describes how i feel about the majority of facts quoted by most speakers.

May 25, 2005

when the bride of CHRIST doesn’t act like the birde of CHRIST

my church is going through some rough times right now. the whole thing started out with a legitimate disagreement on how the school and church should work together. one group of people had one view and another group held another view which our pastor holds. personally, i don’t have a problem with members of the church disagreeing with each other. actually i usually think that dialogue over disagreements is a good thing – it helps us to figure out what to do and how to do it.

the problem with this disagreement is that it became personal very quickly. we now have people who are willing to do whatever is necessary for their side to “win.” anonymous emails and letters are being mailed to church members, rumors are being spread about my pastor’s family, the newspaper and television stations have been called, and various other dumb things are now going on. it’s all very stupid. just the sort of things that members of CHRIST’s bride should be involved in. right?

my pastor and his family are the ones being hurt now. he is a genuine servant (unfortuneately a rarity in the world of pastors) and a very honest, transparent, open guy. i love him and can’t stand seeing him hurt. i really don’t think the original disagreement has anything to do with what people are doing to him now. i believe that now it’s all about hurting him and winning. it’s all pretty evil.

May 25, 2005

yet another quiz

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative

81%

Postmodernist

69%

Fundamentalist

56%

Idealist

50%

Romanticist

38%

Existentialist

31%

Modernist

19%

Materialist

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

it’s rather funny to me that i “tend to shy away from organized religion.” either i have a odd way of “shying away from organized religion” or i’m simply so shy that i can’t yet express my shyness concerning organized religion.

May 25, 2005

the austins

arnold sent me this link today. it’s an interview with audio adrealine and during the interview one of the band members starts talking about the austin’s call to missions. arnold didn’t send me the link thinking that i would post it up on the blog or anything and he and susie will probably be mad at me for posting this because they are not in it for any glory but GOD’s but i thought y’all would enjoy hearing what others have to say about our very cool friends the austins. they’re my heros.

here’s the video.

May 24, 2005

the ministry of getting others involved

i did something right today (which is not always true). most anytime we are doing something around the student center (setting up for something, adding something, changing something, etc.) i try to get kids involved in doing it. we painted our little cafe and there were five kids and one adult doing it. we tore the carpet up from the student center and there were teens involved. it’s not that we want the kids as free labor (though that’s nice), or that we want them to have ownership of the ministry by being a part of making it happen (though we do). nope, we get kids involved in doing things because good conversations seem to happen when we do physical work with teens. so today i wanted to get a few kids involved in helping us put our new light bar up in our student center. because of the physical nature of the work we were going to be doing i decided to call guys to help us (stupid sexist pig that i am). unfortunately the guys i called last night didn’t work out and thus it looked like it would merely be me and alan working on the light bar.

that was true until lunch. at lunch julie and laura came by to say “hi.” besides saying hello they asked the fateful question “what are y’all doing today?” when i went on to describe what we were doing they asked to see my diagram of it and then started asking questions about it. after seeing the diagram i asked if they wanted to see what we had done thus far. julie went ballistic. turns out she wants to be a aeronautical engineer and is fascinated by fabricating things (i’ve known her for four years and this was new to me because she usually the one of the people we turn to for photography and creative work). we went over to the student center and i showed them the work we had done thus far. then i asked if they would like to help. they stayed for the next two hours helping with the man/woman-lift, placing bolts on the supports, and then drilling holes in the bar itself. it was great. in the end they even signed their names on the top of the bar as a physical marker of their involvement in the project.

who would have known they would have been so fascinated by a man/woman-lift? i didn’t and thus the only thing i did right in this was actually asking if they wanted to help when they showed up of their own volition.

May 24, 2005

light bar

thanks to julie and laura helping me and alan today we now have a new light bar in the student center. how exciting is that? i can barely contain myself. just think of it … a new light bar. ahhhhhhh! isn’t it nice?

May 23, 2005

double post

i usually try to avoid posting the same entries on this blog and my other blog but something happened today that makes me laugh just thinking about it. so i decided to post it here also. here goes.

my youngest son, noah, had a “caddyshack” moment earlier today. his second grade class at parkview went swimming at the bocage racquet club today. the day was fun for a little while but then something happened. pam was talking with another mom at the event and suddenly noticed that a lifeguard was reaching with a long pole into the swimming pool and all the kids were forming a very wide circle around whatever the lifeguard was trying to capture with the pole. it would appear that one of the kids had really decided to “drop the kids off at the pool.” oh yes someone had “dropped a load” right in the middle of the bocage racquet club’s swimming pool. the employees chased out all the kids who had actually stayed in the pool and then super-shocked the pool. i sure hope someone shouted “DOODY!” when they found it.

i would have paid money for it to have merely been a baby ruth candy bar and for the pool guy to reach over and take a bite of it.

May 23, 2005

lighting

i love “hand me downs.” i know some youth ministers complain about getting the “big church’s” left overs because they feel like it belittles or degrades their ministry but that’s not me. nope i love getting older stuff for free. today i received four ellipsoidal lights to replace four of our par64 cans. we use 9 par64 cans to illuminate our stage (and circle when we worship “in the round” – which is pretty frequent). these had been “hand me downs” from “big church” about two years ago. they have worked decent and their price was perfect – free. today i got the 4 ellipsoidal lights that our music minister had just lying around. the lights are in perfect condition they had merely been replaced because our church auditorium “needed” newer better lighting fixtures. the ellipsoidal lights are much more focusable than par cans and thus more controllable. putting these in means i have the opportunity to place better lighting and and use the older lights to illuminate “worship stations” in the back (now we have to improvise lighting for those stations).